She Said: What's For Dinner? Pork Roast!
As most of you know, I began to embrace the Clean Eating lifestyle about a two years ago. Let me tell you, it is one of the best things I've ever done! It has made me much healthier and energized! Not to mention, the creativity has spiked since I started the plan! Plus, since Bryan loves to cook as much as I do, we have come up with some pretty delicious meals!
I've been thinking lately, though, why should we keep these amazing meals all to ourselves? My friends are constantly asking for my recipes, so why not just give them to the world! In other words, welcome to one of my (many) categories of blogs that will feature on the "She Said" portion of our family website: What's For Dinner?
On this episode of What's For Dinner, I will be delighting you with a delicious recipe of Pork Roast that was featured in not one, but TWO meals for the month! I know, amazing, right? But let's get down to it.
Now, Bryan despises the people that make you read all the way through their whole website before giving you the recipe, so I'm just going to lay this on right here and you can choose whether or not to read beyond that. Cool beans? Great!
Pork Roast
Ingredients:
Pork shoulder (Our shoulder was about 6-8 lbs and we cut it in half to make 2 portions)
3 carrots
3 potatoes
1 onion
seasonings of your choice (We had a Caribbean Jerk seasoning left over that we used, but you can use whatever suits your fancy: chili powder and cayenne, plain old salt and pepper, anything!)
Directions:
Place the pork shoulder in your crockpot.
Cut up the carrots, potatoes, and onion and place around the roast.
Add your seasonings to the roast (mix it up a bit and choose different ones).
Put the crockpot on low for 8 hours or so until the shoulder pulls apart. We have a crockpot that will cook the pork for the selected time and then keep it warm until we get home, which is delightful!
If you aren't going to be eating the pork tomorrow, you can put the whole thing in a baggie in your fridge if you will be eating it later that week, or in the freezer if it's going to sit a while.
Enjoy!
So, there you have it, a blog post that puts the recipe at the START of the blog! Mind blown!
In all seriousness, though, here is what our night of pork roasting looked like:
I came home from the store with a large pork shoulder and some random veggies, thinking it would be a great way to use up the Caribbean Jerk seasoning in our cabinet. Sometimes half plans are better than full ones and this one turned out amazing!
So, after unloading all of the ingredients, it was time to start prepping! I cut up the veggies and split the into two portions first, putting one in a baggy and one in the crockpot.
You can either add your spices now or later, up to you. The advantage of adding them now is that they can more easily mix in with the vegetables instead of just getting soaked up by the pork. Since I was using the Caribbean Jerk sauce for the crockpot pork and we weren't cooking the other for a week or more, I didn't put any spices in just yet.
The next step is to cut your pork in half and split that between the two portions as well. Even though it was the leanest should I could find at the store, I still prefer to cut off as much fat as possible to keep it even more lean. (Ed. That's Bryan's handsome hand and amazing butchery skills in the second picture --B.)
Half of the pork went into the baggy with the veggies and I made sure to remove as much air as possible from the bag to make it fit easier in the freezer.
The other portion of the pork went into the crockpot and then I used the seasoning packaging to inject the spices into the pork.
Yes, I know how amazing that looks, most definitely, but just wait, it looks so much better when it's done!
We put the crockpot in the fridge for the night and tucked in for a good night of sleep. The next morning, I put the crockpot on low for 8 hours and then let it sit on warm until Bryan got home. About 7 hours in, it was nice and tender and I was able to shred it very nicely. From there, it had time to soak in the jerk seasoning and pork juices. Yum!
Man, I wish you guys could have smelled just how amazing this was! You totes have to make this at home this weekend, friends! Bryan and I both had dinner on this and put the leftovers in the fridge for yet another dinner! That's two meals for a half portion of pork roast! Yes, please!
I promise you won't be sorry when you indulge in the recipes above or any of my future What's For Dinner blog posts. Stay tuned for more mouthwatering recipes and juicy pictures to go with them. Until next time, polish those forks!
